You may want to spend less time of sites like Facebook and YouTube, but actually doing it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. HabitLab is an open-source project from Stanford that attempts to make cutting back on habit-forming sites a little bit easier.

If you’ve used birth control pills for any length of time, you may have been told to take it at the exact same time every day to ensure effectiveness. Maintaining a consistent pill schedule at home is as easy as setting an alarm on your phone—but what happens when you travel across several time zones?

This week we have a guy who desperately wants to escape his soulless career and become a writer, but he’s too busy to write. Should he leave his job so he can finally find the time to put pen to paper? Or will he realize that it’s possible to make time for his passion if he’s willing to dig deep?

It’s good to have a schedule planned out each week, but having too many appointments set for each day might be be more harmful than helpful. A recent study suggests the more self-imposed deadlines we have in a day, the less deep work we can get done.

When you realize you need to get something done, you probably think to yourself, “I have to do that soon.” But that type of thinking disrupts your motivation in two ways: by messing with your sense of time and robbing you of urgency.

I have a bad to-do habit. I make big ambitious lists of things I want to do, then let them pile up in my to-do app until I’m so scared that I quit the app and start a new one. (I, like several Lifehacker commenters, don’t know how I got a job at a productivity site.) But I’ve found a way out of my to-do debt.

There’s a lot to do. There always is. You sit at your desk well past quittin’ time each day to ensure it gets all done, but in the end you suffer for it. It’s okay to leave work on time, and these tips can help you make it a habit.

Setting an alert on your iOS device or Mac computer can be done in a variety of ways. You can ask Siri, use your Clock app, set up a reminder, or make an alarm. Unfortunately, these all come with a few caveats that may leave you confused as to why your phone is buzzing at 3am—or end up with you rushing out the door…

Do you feel like your social life is out of control? Maybe you (or your kids) have events every evening, when all you want to do is spend a quiet night at home. Maybe you feel like you’re spending too much time “touching base” and “picking brains” with people you aren’t close to, and not enough time with your friends.…

Working at home means you’re surrounded by all of your stuff: from that pile of dirty dishes in your sink to that pile of laundry that’s still unfolded. And maybe you have a pressing deadline along with a pressing need to sort that pile of books (you sure do have a lot of piles!). Good news: you can do both with the…

Today is National Plan for Vacation Day, so bust out your calendar and start thumbing through those travel guides. You don’t want to let those precious vacation days go to waste just because you got too busy before you organized some much deserved R and R.

Getting kids out the door in the morning can go one of two ways: They wake up early and then dawdle, forcing a last-minute scramble, or they wake up late, forcing a last-minute scramble. I know very few people who get to school or day care on time and with serenity—maybe those folks who have a late start time and a…

We only get so much time in this life, and yours is running out, friend. That might seem scary, but it doesn’t have to be—it can be motivating. Sometimes you just need a reminder that you need to make it count. This tool sets your Google Chrome homepage and any new blank tabs you open to a clock slowly ticking toward…